Iron Man Anime: "Going Nuclear"Review

The best action shows successfully blend the fights and explosions with intriguing plots and great writing, and so far this Iron Man series is getting the formula right.

First, let me say I really dig Adrian Pasdar as Stark. He carries the show with a mix of humor and perplexed thoughtfulness, although the writing does have a few cheesy lines that might fit more in a Spider-man show.

On the other side, I detest the Nanami character, who is still quite annoying - but when she enters "serious reporter mode", as Tony calls it, she's not so bad. In the Wolverine anime, I'm enjoying the supporting cast more than the main character, but in this series I just want the side characters to go away so I can get more of Tony Stark/Iron Man. The side characters are just comic relief, but there's nothing we need to be "relieved" from.

This week's story moves quickly, with plenty of well-choreographed action scenes to punctuate a plot that is basically a detective story. For the most part, I like the writing in this series and I love how there's a balance between the character development, the overall plot with the Zodiac mystery, and some really nice action scenes.

The battle with Cancer from the Zodiac group is quick, but energetic, and the build-up is nicely done. There are also a lot of clever ideas in the writing, like Tony using a security camera's recorded footage to help in his investigation. There's also Tony's sweet car, and a lot of little additions to the English dub that I think are actually better than the original Japanese script (like Tony's, "I want one" when encountering the camouflage tank).

This is a high-energy episode, with plenty of time spent chasing the bad guys through the streets of Japan. But the actual fights are pretty short, with Iron Man dispatching his enemies with relative ease. It's still cool to watch Iron Man kick ass and take names, but it would be even cooler to see a real challenging fight for him.

The mystery of what exactly is going on in the plot gets an additional twist with the appearance of our "concerned citizen". He shows up right when Tony was about to take care of some bad guys, and it's not quite clear which side he's on yet. It's a bit of a tease, but in a good way.

This series is building up a simple-but-intriguing plot, piece by piece. As the story unravels, things just get more interesting, and so far each episode improves upon the last. If we could just see a little less of the goofy supporting characters, this would be an awesome show.